Prior to the start of the interleague game at Yokohama between the BayStars and the Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles on Sunday 24 May, infamous former slugger Jose Canseco faced off against former BayStar and Seattle Mariner closer Kazuhiro “Daimajin” Sasaki in a ceremonial “at bat”.
Because Canseco wanted to launch a homerun into the stands at the expense of Daimajin, he repeatedly asked for “one more pitch” resulting in a 9 pitch ceremonial at bat (which is reminiscient of Tsuyoshi Shinjo’s ceremonial first at bat against Hichori Morimoto last season in Fukuoka), but the attention seeking PED whistleblower could not reach the short porch of Yokohama Stadium.
Canseco had faced Sasaki 3 times during their MLB careers, and after the ceremonial at bat Canseco commented that “Sasaki’s fastball and forkball were just as I remembered from our playing days, I should’ve practiced more for this occasion”.
The atmosphere at the Japan-Korea I went to see (Japan won 14-2 in 7 innings on the mercy rule, the first time either country’s done it to each other… of course, the Koreans came back 2 days later to shut down Japan 1-0 in its usual nail-biting fashion) was absolutely electric, probably the best sporting event atmosphere that I’ve been in.
Here are some videos from that day (7 Mar 2009, Tokyo round of 2009 WBC).
Taiwanese fans doing the Atlanta Braves tomohawk chop-like cheer against China in the day game.
Ichiro’s at bats, crazy camera flashes in his first plate appearance, bunt single in his second, and crowd going crazy after his 3rd hit of the evening.
Whenever Ichiro was at bat, the camera flashes went crazy like fireworks in the stands. This video doesn’t quite do justice as the campact digital camera’s video mode’s not sensitive enough to capture all the flashes. There were at least 2-3x more visible than what is captured here.
As for the WBC warmup games themselves. Saitama Seibu Lions beat down the Japanese national team 7-2, and the Yomiuri Giants barely lost 1-2 in extra innings on a wild pitch. And both club teams were lacking a few regulars to the national team, and were in full spring training mode by the latter half of the games, with lineups full of bench players and minor leaguers taking the mound. Needless to say, Samurai Japan looked horrible on both days, but hopefully this (and the opening game against China on Thursday) serves as a wakeup call for the team, otherwise they may not even make it out of the 1st round held at home in the Tokyo Dome. Notorious slow starter Ichiro is also having a horrible lead up to the WBC with only 3 hits in 23 at bats (and at least 2 of them were of the infield kind).
Many baseball fans tend to have a soft spot for knuckleballers, and I’m no different.
It looks like R.A. Dickey will make the Mariners opening day roster with his successful spring training and AAA season. Let’s hope he makes the roster, knucklers are always fun to watch. EWC article and amusing video here.
NPB had a knuckler last year with Jared Fernandez of the Hiroshima Carp. Unfortunately for him, the Carp, and all knuckleball fans, his stint in Japan was unsuccessful. His numbers were worse across the board (ERA, H/9, HR/9, K/9, BB/9) than during his minor league career. They were even worse than his MLB numbers, except for BB/9. Though small sample caviat obviously applies here, I wonder what the cause for his lack of success here. Then again some people can throw better knucklers than others, so maybe Japanese batters were better able to hit his not-so-good knuckleballs. As pitching in Japan is less about power and more about deception, so the batters might be better at hitting slower pitches, perhaps. Or it could just be that he didn’t adapt well to NPB, that happens to many imports every year.
